Civil Rights Pioneer Dies at 68

Mildred Loving and her husband, Richard, were instrumental in a U.S. Supreme Court decision 41 years ago that states could not prohibit interracial marriages.

In 1958, the Lovings, a black woman and a white man, were arrested in Virginia and pleaded guilty to breaking the state’s Racial Integrity Act. They agreed to leave the state, but grew lonely for their home and family, and brought their situation to the attention of the American Civil Liberties Union. The appeal eventually went before the Supreme Court, which handed down a unanimous ruling that struck down all state laws barring interracial marriage. Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote, “We have consistently denied the constitutionality of measures which restrict the rights of citizens on account of race.”

Although the Lovings both stated that they pursued their case for personal, not political reasons, Mildred Loving said later in life that she was opposed to laws against gay marriage. Meanwhile, a 2006 amendment to the Virginia Constitution made it illegal for same-sex couples to marry or enter into a civil union.

In 1958, Mildred and Richard Loving, a black woman and a white man, were arrested in their Virginia home; their marriage certificate, obtained in Washington, D.C., was considered invalid in Virginia, which prohibited interracial marriage. The Lovings evaded a one-year jail sentence by agreeing to never return to Virginia as a couple again. But both of them missed their families in Virginia, and after an appeal that eventually went to the Supreme Court, laws against interracial marriage were overturned. “We have thought about other people,” Richard Loving said as they pursued the case, “but we are not doing it just because somebody had to do it and we wanted to be the ones. We are doing it for us.”

In 2007, NPR marked the 40th anniversary of the Supreme Court ruling on an episode of “All Things Considered.” ACLU attorney Bernard Cohen described the Lovings as “very simple people, who were not interested in winning any civil rights principle. They just were in love with one another and wanted the right to live together as husband and wife in Virginia, without any interference from officialdom.”

Mildred Loving issued a public statement to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Supreme Court ruling. Loving asserted once again that their struggle was personal, not political, but she concluded with, “I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry.”

According to Stanford University sociologist Michael Rosenfeld, 7 percent of U.S. marriages in 2005 were interracial. He is optimistic about the future of diversity in America: “We see a blurring of the old lines, and that has to be a good thing, because the lines were artificial in the first place.”

In February 2008, a small group gathered at the Richmond Circuit Court Clerk's office to protest the fact that no gay couples would awarded marriage licenses that day, or any day. In November 2006, voters in Virginia passed a constitutional amendment that made civil unions and domestic partnerships illegal and defined marriage as heterosexual institution. “Marriage has always been a unique institution specifically for a man and a woman," said Chris Freund, a spokesman for one of the groups that rallied for the amendment. Plenty of others come to court each year to dispute that distinction.